Wow, this sure is a "heated" debate. While I have not read all the above posts, I have a comment. I can only comment on my personal experiences. To those that call the baiter lazy, they have never carried 100#'s of corn through the woods to their location, lol. I used to hunt with a guy that did jut that 2 times aa week at multiple locations in northern Wisconsin. Between the cost of the corn, the time and money to drive 2 hours north 2x a week and the effort(sweat) to tramp in the woods, I myself did not see it worth while. When my father first started baiting a stand 20 years ago, it worked, plain and simple. He shot a lot of deer up north over a corn pile. Now, not so much. Are there less deer? Maybe, but I believe it has turned them nocturnal. The bait disappears each night, no sightings during daylight hours. The trailcam proves this also.
Wow, I am rambling, lol. So, if done right, can it work? Probably, only you know for sure. My dad still thinks it does even though he sees very few deer over the bait.I do think that deer "learn" what the corn pile means----danger. If you use a bait pile and it works for you, great! If you have been using one and not seeing deer, like my dad, try something else. I truly believe that in the big woods of Northern Wisconsin, if you are not able to get a huge amount of bait in the woods without giving yourself away, it will not work the majority of the time. So in our scenario, it does not work like you would hope. It would be too expensive and/or illegal to do it where it would start to work. I say illegal, because to really work, you would needa feeder to distribute the bait over a longer period of time and maybe even have a cover on it at night, so the deer can only feed during the day.
hope this made sense, I'm dizzy from writing it. If it works for you great, but I really would have better luck up north if people did not do it any longer since to me, it makes them much more nocturnal. This may be only becaue the ones doing it are not doing if correctly, my dad being one of them. I think he "checks" the corn pile even more than hunts it, the deer probably watch him walk in on the same trail at the same time every day to the same stand with no regard for the wind, and wonders why the luck does not change????